but tonight you're on my mind
by spiralbound
Summary: Fabrastings drabble. Maybe fate is just a word and it's all lucky coincidences exploding around you. This one is about second chances that taste like raspberries and laughter and snow and things that eat you from the inside.


A/N: No references for this drabble but just cause -

Song of the day: Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should Have Come Over

Thought of the day: "If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets." - Haruki Murakami

* * *

Here's how it happens: you walk up to the barista and you order the first drink your eyes land on. You never knew how to pick fancy drinks with long twisted names. Your clothes, education, manners are sophisticated but tea, coffee - it was never your thing. You're polite enough in the few words you exchange, the girl smiles back at you. Her voice reminds you of something, not anything tangible really, just reminds you of something you have known a long time ago. It's sweet but not childish, pleasant but not overbearing like the sunlight of summer outside. You end up choosing another drink; they're out of mint, she says. She names some other options but your thoughts are ticking loudly. Do you know her? There's something about her face, her easy eyes, her open forehead. The key is at the fringes, at the borders, at the corners of your mind and memory. You hear raspberries and you mumble that you'll go for that, whatever it is.

Suddenly you realize she's telling the man who is pouring your drink that it's for Spencer. It's like cold water splashing your face in the morning because you haven't given her your name and –

Holy freaking fuck in the almighty skies and clouds. Quinn Fabray.

"Oh my gosh –" later you'll wonder how shocked your face must have looked because the bursting of the bubble of your surprise almost knocks you over. "But of course, you're –"

"Quinn," she nods lightly, not disappointed, as if not at all expecting you to recall her name. "We took that surrealism and mythology class together back in junior year."

You make polite small talk while you wait for your drink. It's her friend's coffee shop, she's only filling random shifts for summer before she starts her grad school program in the fall. She talks a little bit about a charity group she leads, short stories that she writes for fun, the research she's been doing. You ruffle through a quick list of people you both know and mention them just to keep talking. She asks you about your life and you tell her you just got back and it's good to relax for a while. You furrow your brows and wonder if she knows about your travels in the Near East and your journalism work but she asks you about Irbid and camels. You manage to hold your breath.

Your conversation is cut off when your friend comes. She orders something and Quinn takes her name.

Then your drink is in your hand and you're sitting down. The couches are a worn and dry blue. Your friend is happy and bubbling with stories you half listen to but don't really hear.

Your mind runs off.

Here's how it happens: Quinn is by the window, the light coming through catching in her hair. It shines in sapphire and sulfur. Her face is porcelain, her eyes are emerald. In some moments, when she looks at the book in front of her, when the professor's voices rings and chimes and echoes around the gothic stones of your Yale castle classroom, this girl could be a statue of marble. Frozen in perfection but then, not really.

Her lips move on the filmstrip of your memory, in strong and blurry shades of motion, of ruby and fire, so finally: words. Words and music, alliteration, metrics, rhymes, rhythms, beats, it all comes to you. With it, the great and consuming longing, the same that fishermen and sailors feel for the seas once they become too old to be in water. Except your pain is deeper and more twisted, it's a plea and desire for something you have not even once had. How could you ache and be so torn over a girl you have never touched?

Your friendship with Quinn was a tentative line you walked on once. After class, over the first week of winterfall, your feet crashed the fluffy snow. You threw snowballs at each other and attempted to make a snowman. The figure was left with two balls of a body and you retreated to the nearest dinning hall to warm up. You wish but you don't remember much except the sound of her laughter falling with the snow, mixing in your hair and making your lashes flutter.

Sitting opposite her, a fire crackling behind you, you realize you can't be close to her. If you talk to her, she'll have your heart. Surely someone else will love her. Surely someone else already does.

What strikes you most about her is how natural and normal she appears. Her chest expands with every small breath, the edges of her hair are messy, her eyeliner is barely visibly a bit oddly laid, a piece of broccoli gets stuck in her front teeth and she pushes it out with her tongue. She finds the pasta too warm and tells you about her favorite acapella group. Her honesty is simple but her truth is brave. You know no one as straightforward as the girl in front of you who puts another sugar cube in her mug talks the way she does, about harmony and eloquence, about belonging and needing camaraderie, about depleting traditional symbols and creating new ideologies. You've heard her in lectures and you've feel her heart beating through her coat in the only hug you ever share as you part that night and wish each other a good night. A person like that is magic, like all the stories you grew up with as a child coming to life. You want to unravel her. You want to know her mysteries. You want to figure her out. You want to be the piece that holds the fairy tales together. And you want to take her fingers and wrap them around the beating jukebox of your life and dare her to pull it out of your chest.

She tells you, "We'll see each other tomorrow!" with an early Christmas jingle in her voice.

But you think that cannot happen. You think it will ruin you completely if you do see her, ever again.

Here's how it happens: For the rest of the semester you switch seats so you can't see the windows, so you're right in front of the professor. You never really avoid Quinn. You also never hear her laughter.

As your friend sips her coffee, you fiddle with the raspberry dream concoction you have been sipping. You catch a glimpse of Quinn. Not your Quinn, never your Quinn, maybe not even that Quinn that you imagined you once could have known.

Then you wonder, was it all fanciful thinking, was it all glittery dreaming, making a person seem more that they were. Was it just the instant magnetic pull of a person that drew you and made you run? Maybe there would have been nothing there, had you jumped the walls of Quinn's castle like a prince saving the princess from her bewitched chamber. Maybe nothing more ever existed. Maybe it would still have been that same normal and polite pretty girl that lay on the outside. Maybe she was always brave, always honest. Not like you. But you don't get to know.

You catch her cleaning the countertop and her eyes brighten when they meet yours.

Suddenly you see the best in her. All of it. The words, the smiles, what you've heard from friends, what you know. It shines and makes your heart close tightly around itself. You have been really, really fucking foolish.

When your drinks are finished, your friend drags you out of the door. You try to wave to Quinn but she doesn't see you. You think it's fitting. What never was, never gets to have an ending.

You part ways and you're left standing alone. Cars speed by. Street lights change. The city bustles and hustles in thousands of languages and noises. People pass you. Your feet are heavy. Your heart is feeling lost.

You're running to the coffee shop, you open the door, you fly up in front of Quinn. She looks at you with a silent question about your return. Why didn't you come for her before? Why didn't you sit next to her? Why didn't you tell her you only need one lucky piece of dust to make a pearl? What's the price of a second chance?

"Do you want another?"

You look at her.

Her hair is wavy, she taps at an empty cup.

"Spencer?"

You look at her.

"Spencer, what do you want?"

To fly across the deepest waters and sink in your eyes, you think.

To hold you once more, you think.

To know the ways the trippings of the tip of your tongue against the tops of your teeth make beautiful words, you think.

To feel your laughter mixed with mine, you think.

To see if I am brave enough to be alive, you think.

But you only say one word.

"You," you say.


End file.
